Greater New Orleans

'Going Green' video earns green in contest

Members of the Alliance for Affordable Energy's chapter of the La. Green Corps, an alliance of nonprofit job training programs, had plenty to be thankful for last week after the video for their rap song, "Going Green," won a short film contest.

Sponsored by the Independent Film Channel, the Sundance Channel and the environmental group Earthjustice, the Media Lab Studios Efficient Film Challenge gave its Spirit of Efficiency award — with a $1,000 prize — to former Green Corps members Kerwinell Singleton, Clarence Matthews, Derek Taplet Jr. and Shawn Butler, who created the song, and to Julia Kumari Drapkin, who made the music video.

The song features a slick, low-down beat with bubbly accents — precisely the kind of track you’d expect to hear in clubs and on the radio — with clever rhymes about energy-efficiency and green building.

"We need to do some installation, /Let me do a demonstration. /Foam boards in your wall, /Leaving out precipitation. /Door-sweep weather-stripping /Weatherize is our mission. /Caulking up every crack /From the hall to the kitchen, /Sealing up air leaks /from the hall to the kitchen," Singleton rhymes in the song’s second verse.

In another verse, then-corps member Taplet raps: "Wanna inspire you to go green, /me and my whole team. /The weather down here’s something else, /so we got up on some new things. /Your energy bill too high? /Well, that’s due to your A/C. /That smallest hole in your home can cost you a lot of green."

For the corps members, who had started the four-month job training program — financed by YouthROC and Job1, both local arms of the state Department of Labor — in March, the lyrics and their technical content came easy, said corps alum Derek Taplet.

"The hook, the chorus, just came naturally," Taplet said. "We just put down everything that we learned from working out in the field, and the rest is history."

The corps members, using an instrumental track handed down from a chain of friends, laid down their verses on home recording software in two days, said program manager Ray Guidry with the Alliance for Affordable Energy.

Later, the Alliance asked Drapkin, a videographer who already had been contracted to create a series of corps member profiles and how-to shorts, to make a video for "Going Green."

Throughout June, Drapkin filmed the corps members working in the field, and the video shows them caulking beneath baseboards and around electrical sockets; installing a radiant barrier wrap in a home attic; and meeting with clients for a home energy audit.

In September, the Alliance screened the video at a meeting of the City Council utility committee.

"Actually, (it was) the (meeting) where they approved the plan for Energy Smart," the proposed citywide energy-efficiency incentive program, said Forest Bradley-Wright with the Alliance. "I think it did kind of encapsulate the spirit of what we hope energy-efficiency and the green movement will do for our community."

Drapkin submitted the video to the film competition, and when the corps members received word of their win two weeks ago, the news was "very surreal," Taplet said.

"When they first called me and told me that we won, I called my grandma and just acted like a 5-year-old kid that just went to Disneyland."

Though the "Going Green" ensemble has yet to reunite for a live performance of the song, Taplet said he would be more than happy to sing the green movement’s praises again.

"We have yet to get together and perform the song, and that would be just so supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," he said.

The Alliance For Affordable Energy-La. Green Corps’ "Going Green" video can be found online on the Alliance’s home page, www.all4energy.org.